Moony and Padfoot
by Ogden'sOldFirewhiskey
Summary: Remus and Sirius speak openly for the first time since James and Lily died. Set at the beginning of OotP. Canon-compliant, missing moment fic. "He wasn't sure he even knew how to begin to pick up the pieces of all the things that had transpired between them, all the things they had lost together and separately."


The thick silver goblet hit the table with a satisfying thunk. Sirius had always found the Black family goblets to be ostentatious symbols of a status to which he did not think his family entitled. But he could not deny that there was a certain pleasure to their weight, the substance of the silver in his hand.

He'd certainly gotten used to the feel of them for the last month.

It was as he was contemplating whether there was any use at all in resisting the urge to refill the goblet for what would be the fourth time that morning when he heard the door in the entryway open. He wasn't exactly expecting anyone, though he noted that whoever was walking toward the kitchen had certainly been there before, as they clearly had taken some measures to prevent the demented old portrait from announcing her displeasure. Perhaps he should have been on guard, but he couldn't muster the energy to care whether it was friend or foe making their way toward the kitchen.

He almost hoped it was foe. That, at least, would be exciting.

It was Remus who walked through the door, his lined face looking somehow more haggard than it had when he'd seen him at the last Order meeting. Sirius shot him a grim sort of smile of acknowledgment.

"What's the occasion?" asked Remus wryly, eyes twitching to the silver goblet and bottle of firewhiskey.

Sirius snorted, splashing more amber liquid into his goblet, misgivings be damned. "Since when have I required an occasion for this?"

"I think you might've offered a pretense back in fourth year, but it's tough to remember," replied Remus with a hint of a smile. "Is anyone else here?"

"None at all," Sirius said, before taking another gulp. "Unless you count Kreacher, which I certainly don't."

The heavy chair scraped loudly along the stone floor as Remus sat down. Without a word, he flicked his wand to summon a second goblet from the cupboard. He poured a measured amount of the firewhiskey into the goblet and raised it. He seemed to teeter on the edge of speech for a moment, as though to propose some sort of toast, but then lifted the goblet to his lips and drank before any words could escape.

"Were you looking for someone?" asked Sirius, though he could not say that he was genuinely curious.

Remus shrugged. "I thought, maybe, if Albus were here I could give him an update. But, mostly I just wanted to… to sit somewhere."

Sirius was glad Remus had not bothered to pretend he had come to see him. He also knew, dimly, that Remus' assignment was likely deeply unpleasant, but he couldn't find a drop of sympathy within himself or his goblet. "Well, my apologies that you've come to sit here."

"It's odd, being here," remarked Remus, glancing around the room. "I was trying to remember… I think the last time I was here was that night we stole your father's gold cauldron." Sirius poured more firewhiskey into his goblet. "Doesn't feel like the same place, does it?"

Sirius laughed mirthlessly. "That's the problem though, isn't it? It feels exactly the same."

Sirius hated the pity in Remus' eyes. "Have you spoken to Albus? There's nothing you can…"

"Leave it," he said sharply.

"Sirius," he said, in that calm and rational tone he knew so well. It used to be that Sirius admired him for it. He wasn't sure when, exactly, that admiration had transformed into something resembling revulsion.

"I said, leave it, Remus," he interrupted harshly. "There's nothing you or I can do about it. And if you're going to come in here and look at me like that, then you can go and find somewhere else to sit. You, at least, have that luxury."

Remus raised his eyebrows, affronted. "That luxury? Oh, yes, I'm having a lovely time consorting with the likes of Jared Bainesworth. Did you know he murdered a woman last week?"

Sirius snorted. "Did he? Well, at least you have something to _do_, some despicable story to hurl at me. I could regale you with the hour I spent the evening before last trying to perfect the taste of oak matured mead from a refilling charm, but I wouldn't want to put you to sleep."

Remus seemed to be struggling to keep his voice calm. "It isn't anything to envy, Sirius, what I'm doing, what I _am_ –"

"Oh, I can't listen to this again," said Sirius, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice. "If you weren't so busy feeling sorry for yourself, you'd have noticed by now that you can do whatever you like."

Remus breathed deeply. "I can do some things. But not whatever I like."

Sirius shook his head bitterly. "You can do a damn sight more than you think you can, and frankly I'm not in the mood to hear you whinge about your miserable existence."

"Oh stop it," hissed Remus, slamming his goblet on to the table. "You've been whinging about your miserable existence since you arrived in this place."

Sirius took another long gulp from his goblet. "You've got me there."

They both drank for a few moments, neither seeming having any desire to break the tense silence that had fallen between them. Sirius knew he was being an arse, knew that Remus had come to find a moment's peace, but it all just felt so fucking broken between them. It had for the last year, and they both knew it.

"Is this how it is, now?" asked Remus, finally. He didn't look angry or sad or anything at all, really, except tired.

"I suppose," said Sirius shortly, because it was true.

"I'm – "

"Don't apologize."

"So there's nothing I can say, then."

"That's not…" Sirius ran a hand over his face. He had known, on some level, that this conversation was coming. He'd been on the run with Buckbeak for the last year, and although he and Remus had exchanged a few letters, this might have been the first time they'd been alone together since before the world fell apart all those years ago. And he wasn't sure he even knew how to begin to pick up the pieces of all the things that had transpired between them, all the things they had lost together and separately.

"Just let me say it," Remus pleaded softly.

Sirius put his goblet down. He didn't say anything, but Remus seemed to take his lack of objection as permission.

Remus stared at him earnestly, his eyes deeply sad. "I should never have believed you would have betrayed Lily and James like that. I should never have thought you'd… you'd kill all those people, and Peter… that you'd have been a spy…"

Sirius started to speak, but Remus held up his hand. "I know you suspected me, too. But, you suspected me of passing information, never of… of murdering James and Lily. Because that's what it was, me believing that you'd done it. And… I knew you, Sirius. I knew you, and I should've known that you'd never have done that."

Sirius felt his throat constricting, and took another gulp of firewhiskey.

Remus looked more anguished than Sirius could remember seeing him. "I'm sorry, Sirius. I should've done something. I should've looked into it, I should've been there, at the Ministry when you were being put into Azkaban. I should've at least come to talk to you, to hear your side of it. There's no excuse for it, and I know. I was just…" He took another long sip of his drink, his eyes downcast. "Those days were the darkest of my life."

Sirius didn't know what he felt, staring into the lined face of the man he had once considered a brother. He hadn't needed to hear Remus' apology, but it meant something to hear him say it, he realized. "Well, perhaps I shouldn't have tried to murder Peter without consulting you first," he offered at last.

"I would've gone with you," replied Remus bitterly.

"I know."

They sat in silence for a few moments more, both staring into the depths of the silver goblets. "I'm not angry with you," said Sirius finally. "It was shit to realize you weren't going to show up," he acknowledged, remembering those first few days in Azkaban when he'd clung to the belief that Remus would come and he could finally explain it all. "But I'm not angry with you about that. Not anymore."

Remus glanced up at him, a mixture of of surprise and skepticism on his face.

"I'm not," Sirius protested. He struggled for a moment to find the right words to describe what he was. "You just… you always see what you don't have. And after spending twelve years in fucking Azkaban, and now…" he gestured to the dark and dank room that had become his new prison. "Well, I just don't feel sorry for you, anymore. Not that I ever felt _sorry_ for you, really. But I used to… to understand what it did to you. But now, it just doesn't seem like turning into an animal once a month is quite so horrible a fate as you make it out to be."

Remus looked defensive and apologetic at once. Before, he could speak, however, Sirius finally cut to the heart of it.

"You've just wasted so much of what I want."

Remus stared at him. "Wasted… what?"

Sirius smiled bitterly. "You've just had so much time to… to fight. To live. To shag fit birds…" He stared Remus squarely in the eye. "To be there for Harry. And you've wasted all of it feeling sorry for yourself."

Remus looked uncomfortable. "Listen, about Harry. Albus wouldn't tell me where he lived, and I wasn't sure…"

"I thought we were finally being honest with each other?" interrupted Sirius, an eyebrow raised. "We can just drink, if you'd prefer it. I certainly don't mind…"

Remus sighed heavily and covered his face with his hands. It was with a tone of a young boy admitting something terrible that he said, "I… I didn't even tell him at first. When I taught Harry. I didn't even tell him I knew James. He figured it out on his own, because of my connection to you."

"Why didn't you?" asked Sirius baldly.

Remus lifted his head from his hands, looking truly remorseful. "You know why I didn't."

"No, I really fucking don't."

Remus slammed his fist down on the table, so that the goblets vibrated noisily. "Because if he knew, I would've had to explain why I hadn't reached out to him before then, and the only excuse I have for that is that I'm a _coward_."

Sirius held his gaze. He did not contradict him. "It would have meant so much to him, to have you."

"I know," Remus admitted shamefully. "I know."

"I don't understand you."

"Well, you never really did, did you?" he said harshly.

Sirius could not argue with that. "I've resented you," he stated, feeling there was little point in being anything but plain. "Not for me, not for… for Azkaban. But I've resented that you'd had all this time to do the things I would've died to do all those years, and you've… done none of them."

Remus' anger seemed to ebb away. "I don't know what you… I don't know what I can say. My whole life has been… _tainted_ by what I am. And the only thing that ever fixed it was ripped away overnight. Everything I thought I knew was just… gone. I've done the best that I can. It hasn't been as easy as you think it ought to be."

Sirius leveled another hard look at him. "But maybe it isn't as hard as you make it, either."

Remus stared at him for several long seconds, his expression inscrutable. "Maybe not," he conceded finally.

"I just wish you could stop letting the fact that you're a werewolf for 8 hours a month ruin the rest."

"I…" Remus seemed to change what he wanted to say mid-sentence. "I wish I could, too. If it matters, I'd do a lot differently if I had it back to change."

Sirius nodded. What more could he ask for, than Remus admitting the truth? "I forgive you, for thinking I was the spy, you know."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I reckon I'd have thought the same, I mean… I could've told you that we'd changed Secret Keepers and I didn't. You can stop beating yourself up over it, if that'll help."

Remus nodded. "One less thing to beat myself up over, I suppose." He lifted the bottle and refilled both of their goblets. That it was before noon seemed inconsequential.

"That's the spirit," said Sirius dryly.

The minutes dripped by. Sirius was thinking of days long past, days of reckless abandon and camaraderie and naïve invincibility… days that he'd done his best to forget, not because they were sad, but because their youthful optimism contrasted so heavily with his current state. Those days were gone, so what was the use in remembering them?

Perhaps this, then, was the real reason it had been so hard to look at Remus for the last year. Bitterness and resentment weren't exactly good company, but this nostalgic sadness was far worse.

"D'you reckon we were only ever mates because of Prongs?" asked Remus after a time. Sirius supposed he'd been thinking of those days, too.

Sirius considered the question, appreciating that it hardly mattered to him how it had started, but that his answer meant something to Remus. "Maybe at the start. Prongs was a right old pain in the arse, he could've been mates with a Quidditch post…"

He looked back up at Remus, feeling a bit of something that felt, not the same as those long-ago days, but something similar perhaps. "But after the beginning… I think we were mates because we wanted to be. Not because of Prongs, though he would've claimed credit for it, bless him."

Remus nodded slowly. Sirius wasn't sure if it was enough, this acknowledgment that they had chosen each other, but it was something.

"I miss him." The words were quiet, a clandestine admission long felt but never articulated aloud.

Sirius closed his eyes. "I do, too." He'd felt a lot of pain in his life, and there was little to be done about that. But it felt nice, for a moment, to share it with the one person who he knew understood.

"I'm glad you're back," Remus said.

It was funny, if you'd asked him an hour ago whether there was anything redeemable about being locked in this house other than the distant hope that Harry would come to stay soon, he would have laughed and taken a large gulp of his drink. But perhaps he'd been wrong about that.

Remus drained the remaining liquid in his goblet and stood. "I should be going."

Sirius smiled grimly. "Don't let Jared Bainesworth murder you."

"I won't."

He walked toward the door, tired as ever.

"Moony?" Sirius called after his old friend. Remus turned.

"You're not a coward."

Remus held his gaze, looking so like himself that the intervening years seemed to melt away for the tiniest instant, so that he might have been leaving to go to the Hogwarts library. "Thanks, Padfoot." And then he turned and walked from the room.


End file.
